


Shifting Sands (Burn with the Fading Sun)

by starlordspacejesus



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road, mad max - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Reunion Fic, balance of angst and fluff, max deserves some happiness, nux isn't dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-10 07:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4382135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlordspacejesus/pseuds/starlordspacejesus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max Rockatansky sees ghosts. They haunt him, every step he takes and he has an audience with him. They all started before the Water Wars, before the Great Red. And sometimes, just sometimes, stubborn ghosts are more tangible than the others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Faded Photographs

Max saw ghosts out here. Every day, another face dragged up from the rotten depths of his mind, some he hadn’t thought of since the Before (people said before the Great Red, before the Water Wars, always _before_. Max found it easier to use the one word). Most times he ignored it, kept walking, step after step, mile after mile. He didn’t have much choice in it. Learn to live alongside them, stop talking to them, or slip into the feral mindset of the shifting sands. After being branded as a feral, insanity wasn’t as appealing anymore.

Some he saw less often than others. Goose made a common appearance. So did Sprog. Every burning wreck gave Johnny a screaming voice in his head. He didn’t see _her_ as often. Tried to forget about her, not think about her. If he could, the guilt stopped eating at him and he could catch a few moments sleep without feeling an ache in her side where she should be.

That’s what he thought she was. Another trick of the sands. Another ghost, come to haunt him ’til the ends of his days. But she looked different. Harder angles. Wearing leathers like the kind he used to, torn off at the elbows and arms blackened with grease. Shoulders back, head tilted high to catch the final rays of the sun. She looked stronger, less like she gave a fuck about what the world thought about her.

She looked different than what Max remembered. So he stopped, staring wide-eyed at the new image of his late wife. He didn’t dare move. He didn’t dare _breathe_ in case it shattered the illusion.

If it even was one. If it wasn’t an illusion, Max would cross the entire desert just to see her again. Just to hear his name pass her lips.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, and the dunes were bathed in the red glow of the approaching twilight, Jessie ducked her head and turned, walking quickly over the dune behind her. Her footfalls disturbed the sand, sending rivers of it cascading down the dune and switching the shape of dust barely settled. Storms were a regular, here, but since the new governing system of the Citadel, there had been none. There should have been several, and history said that the next storm would blur together with the one after it, a fortnight of sand thick enough to choke on as it forces its way through every nook, cranny and crevice. From where he stood, Max could hear the roar of an engine, and saw the plume of dust from behind it.

He heard the roar. He was intimately familiar with that roar. Amongst all the chaos, of the driving into the storm on the Fury Road, she’d found the scraps of his car and pulled them all together, giving the interceptor another life (the fourth life, it was the cars fourth life after all the times he’d wrecked it) and racing ‘round the desert with it.

It drank guzzoline like the desert soaked up the rare rain, she needed a regular supply of it to keep using the car, and hopefully she’d disabled the bomb under the boot.

The car was what cemented the idea that she was _real_ , rather than an illusion of the sands. Somehow, Jessie had survived and had made her way almost to the Fury Road, all the way from home.

She’d covered his journey, and probably in a more direct way.

Max had nothing better to look for, so he followed her. He trudged along in the dust, cresting the hill before he could find her trail to follow. If he didn’t sleep, and she was smart with how she drove, he had a chance of getting the car in his sights before sunrise.

For better or for worse, for sickness and in health.

She was his wife, and he had abandoned her once before. He was going to find her again and make sure he didn’t lose her. Even if she didn’t know he was there, even if he could never catch up, he was going to try.

Jessie was his wife. He never had the marriage annulled; there hadn’t been a government worth trying to figure out how. She was still his wife regardless of anything that happened, and he had left. Left her in the hospital while he sought out revenge, and too scared to come back in fear of the worst. 

He had left her and regretted that fact every day. He needed to make up for it. And so he walked. And walked. Focussed on putting one foot in front of the other and ignoring the other ghosts that demanded an audience. Focussed on finding the tracks compared to the roads and the dust, and the fading light. 

Once night fell, he wouldn’t be able to see more than a foot ahead without a light source, and he used his last match the previous night.

And he walked, unsure if the path was straight any longer, or if he only wished it was.

The roar of a rig behind him was the only thing that prompted him to its presence, diving to the side and ending up with a mouthful of dust. The squealing breaks, and a fond call of “ _Blood bag!_ ” alerted him to who was driving.

And he walked no more. 


	2. Maps That Don't Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a storm coming, coming to wash away the old and cleanse the ground for the new growths. Now he's clinging to the past stronger than the roots of the desert flower waiting for the season's rain.

The warboys had come across him following the trail left in the dust. There hadn’t been any storms in the month since the attack of the Fury Road, they were overdue for one and it’d wash away Jessie’s tracks in a heartbeat, and leave him alone. So he took the offer to ride along with them, luckily they were following along the same path his wife had.

Furiosa kept Nux on a rig. It kept him feeling useful, while his half-life was teetering on the edge of death. Some warboys were capable of living with their tumours, if they were benign. Some warboys could be found hunched double, with lined faces and lumps growing across them. Others died as pups, with barely a scratch. The Organic Mechanic said it was something to do with not breeding true, a part of the breeded warpups that meant they would rarely live long. That’s why they measured in half-lives, if they made it past two hundred and forty moons, they were on the way to a full life.

Nuclear warfare fucked with their genetics, along with a shitty diet and psychological conditioning made it difficult for them to survive, or even to want to. It’s why they consistently travelled in packs, the mentality that if there was always someone there to witness them, it could prevent the death.

There were only five warboys on the rig, the run wasn’t regular, it was for something specific that Max didn’t care about. Some ‘special cargo’, collected from the Yard. Probably spare parts that were high in demand, and low in supply. They weren’t rushing either, stopping overnight to sleep and driving once everyone was awake, no sooner.

Max slept on top of the rig, the stars stretching across him as a blanket, the metal strong on his back and stretching out the kinks. He could hear the warboys tinkering around, some stripping the engines, or cleaning parts that could never see the light of day.

A V8 interceptor was crying out for the same kind of attention, somewhere in the endless desert.

There was life out in the desert. The wind was picking up, scattering sand across a track he could barely see. Jess could have turned around, and he’d never know it. She looked like she’d been driving at night, hiding during the day and taking advantage of the vast blackness that covered everything like a thick fog. She’d learned to work with the hostile environment, to survive against all the odds.

She did exactly what he wanted to protect her from.

The wind around him was picking up, whipping sand from its still surface. The warboys said the storm would roll in by the next night, coming from behind the Yard (which was still another four day’s drive away). It was going to be a big storm, covering that distance, with this kind of build up it’d be at least three days before it let up, and there’d be no way they could move during it. Not the week long storm he’d expected, yet still long enough to drive him raving mad in the company of warboys.

Despite the drying of the earth, the nuclear attacks, the destruction of the environment and the people left behind, the stars above him were still constant. They followed the same patterns Jess had taught him to read, night after night as they sat in the sand, stories behind each shape and the brightness of each star seeming to increase as Jess gave it her attention. The kite, with the leftmost point following on to the pointers, sloping up to Orion. He could almost hear her, telling him the names, and chuckling when he couldn’t find the right stars.

There was the clanging sound of boots on metal, the announcement of a warboy climbing up the outside of the rig. This one had an empty fuel tank, modified to hold anything they needed, and now having hammocks strung from the roof for beds, a large container of water in the corner closest to the cab.

The climbing stopped with a heavy thump, the boy had arrived on top of the rig, where Max lay.

“Storm’s coming. We’re all settlin' down and tying everything to the floor. You don’t want to be out here, buzzard cars flip all ‘round.” His speech was stuttered, nervous, not many people were comfortable talking to the former blood bag

Max gave a non-committal grunt, more a confirmation that he had heard the boy than anything else. He still didn’t talk much, too long spent alone in the Wastes (and silence was a hard habit to break, even when there were people who expected you to speak). He heard the warboy climb back down the ladder, a hollow ringing announcing that he’d made it back into the tanker, but left the hatch open for Max.

With a long groan, Max pushed himself onto his elbows, giving the dark horizon another scan in case he could see Jess –despite the fact that he _knew_ that he wouldn’t be able to see—before he clambered to his feet, climbing down into the belly of the tanker.

He settled himself next to Nux, the only warboy who was actually _comfortable_ around him, and already started the countdown until the storm would be over.

If he could sleep without dreaming, that’s how he’d pass the time.

Instead, he counted.


	3. Deep in the Belly of the Rig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Each second was counted, savoured, before the next took its place. Two hundred and fifty-nine thousand, two hundred seconds before he was out of the hellhole.

The storm was fierce, the wind whistling in high tones, like nature itself was screaming in pain. The bulk of the rig kept it flat on the sand, but shuddering thuds shook the walls, knocking boys out of their hammocks and making sleep impossible.

Nux had his head pillowed on Max’s shoulder, back rigid against the wall of the rig, and quietly snoring through the storm. He was usually the instigator of the Citadel ‘puppy piles’, and Max always ended up being the pillow of the group (with the wives and Furiosa piled around him, and it was one of the few times he could sleep without waking up in a cold sweat), so Nux’s preference for physical contact didn’t bother him anymore.

The screech of metal on metal prompted Max to raise his hand, bracing against the wall of the rig before it shook with a newfound fury, shaking right down to his bones, to the point where he wasn’t sure if the world would ever stop. A counting that shook the numbers straight out of his brain. Two days. Seventeen hours. Forty-three minutes. Twenty-seven seconds.

Two hundred and thirty-six thousand, six hundred and seven seconds of a storm he hadn’t seen the likes of since the first nukes hit.

The urge to leave had been growing, an itch under his skin, but he knew he couldn’t leave because the skin would be torn from his bones, like paint sandblasted off of a car, like ragged edges worn smooth by the elements.

He could smother the urge, for how long he didn’t know, but the storm was beginning to wind down. Darkest before the dawn. Fiercest before the end. The next shake hit hard enough to tilt the rig, hit hard and didn’t let up (and forcing their balance to move to a forty-five degree angle). Something wedged hard under the base, between the sets of wheels.

Could be a buzzard car.

Could be a fuckin’ big rock.

Plenty of those around.

_Jess,_ the voice in his head whispered. _Could be Jess. She didn’t know the storm schedule, could’ve been surprised by it._ Max tried to ignore it, pulling at the loose threads of his gloves to distract him, but now that the idea of Jess being out there was planted he couldn’t think clearly. Wanted to stare the storm straight in the eyes, demand passage to what he had lost, walk through certain death just to make sure she wasn’t going to die alone.

_Happened once, why should you be here to witness her this time?_

Shut up. **Shut up**. Shut up. He lived with ghosts, he could ignore the tiny voice in his head this time.

The next thump was smaller, no more weight behind it than a person, barely enough to distinguish from the rest of the storm. Max would’ve thought he imagined it if he were any less paranoid. Awake almost three days, and he was questioning each bump that threatened to wake the warboy sleeping on his shoulder.

It was another thirteen thousand, one hundred and forty seconds until they said it was safe to go outside. Warboys first, Max bringing up the tail. The boys were crowded around the side of the rig, right where Max had felt something lodge three and a half hours ago.

They cleared a space for him as he walked up, opening the circle so he could see.

Despite the shattered windows and sand filled interior, he’d know that car anywhere.

She’d carried him from the Halls of Justice to the gas compound, from Bartertown to the start of the Fury Road. He’d slept, curled in her warm embrace with dog at his back more nights than he could count. There was blood, sweat, and tears in her gears and wiring, all because he’d been too stubborn to let someone else help.

The interceptor was the home he’d always come back to, the home that had always been there and waiting for him with open arms.

And here it was, sand pouring over the windowsill and packed against the windscreen, lodged underneath the rig. No one could survive in that. No one could survive the pouring of sand, sneaking into crevices and choking its way down your throat.

Jess couldn’t survive in that.

There was a piece of paper sticking out of the dust, and Max took the two quick steps to grab it before the boys noticed it. It was creased in places, from being handled frequently rather than with care, and the back was crusted orange with red dust.

He turned it over, brushing the sand from its surface, before he actually _looked_ at it. It was the three of them. Jess balancing Sprog on her shoulders, and Max standing close behind in case he fell. All smiles and joy. Max remembered that day. Sprog's second birthday, they'd just left Jess' mum's place, and Sprog wanted to stop at some park they passed. Max felt the agony tear at his heart, the **ache** of missing his family hitting him like a punch to the gut. There was a solid ringing in his ears, overpowering to the chattering of the warboys.

The hot sand pressing against his back was the only thing that told him he’d fallen, the ache in his gut kicking up a notch.

On second thoughts, the punch may have been real.


	4. Sun Glaring on the Horizon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fighting for the right to exist is far more painful than trying to forget.

Max blinks the sand out of his eyes, raising his hand to block the glare from the sun, trying to figure out what hit him. The figure that was standing over him looked at him for a minute, before fisting a hand in his shirt and slamming him against the side of the rig. The warboys were standing back in awe, they’d seen her claw her way out of the sand filling the car, face painted with a fury they’d never seen before.

Every nerve in Max’s body was screaming at him to run, to fight back and get out of this position, but he didn’t. Despite the sand pouring out of her hair, and the snarl on her lips, this was unmistakably Jess—and Max would never hit her. Even if she didn’t have the same stance on the matter.

The photo was still grasped loosely in his hand, and Jess snatched it up (with her free hand, the flesh one, the metal prosthetic was holding him pinned to the rig with the ease that he’d hold a gun), her expression going soft as she gazed at it. That was the Jess he knew, and he spoke before he realised.

                                    “ _Jess_.”

Her gaze snapped back to him, a fear in her eyes at being recognised. But there was a spark of something in her eyes, something that saw something familiar in him. Slowly, she held the picture still in her hands up to the side of his face, comparing the Max she knew to what he was now. Seemingly satisfied, she let the photo fall from her fingers.

Max was prepared to talk, to explain himself, but was cut off when the hand in his shirt tightened—and suddenly Jess was kissing him. Max was primed for violence, and his instinct was to fight back. But this wasn’t violent, it wasn’t affectionate or gentle either, but this wasn’t a fight.

There were clashing teeth, and it hurt like everything Max did these days, but it was real and it was _Jess_.

A desperate keening noise escaped his throat, as Max reciprocated for the first time since all this started. Days, upon months, upon years (really though, how long had it been since he’d been kissed like this?) of remaining by himself. This was desperate, _scared_ and raw.

He tangled his hands in her hair, dragging work hardened thumbs across her cheeks, and trying to keep in the tears that threatened to fall. This was his wife, alive and well, after he’d mourned her for over a decade. This **_hurt_** , hurt like everything else that related to the before, but Max held tight to her anyway.

She was the first to pull away, barely an inch back, but she let go of his shirt. He kept his hands where they were, still tangled in her hair, but wasn’t forcing her to stay close. Jess was the one to lean her head forward, gently resting it against his shoulder.

He whispered her name brokenly, moving his shaking hands out of her hair, swiping haphazardly under his eyes (getting rid of the tears he wouldn’t let anyone but Jess see). Max would have happily stayed here all day, but he could here the warboys beginning to talk—and he was fairly certain Whisper was actually _cheering_ —so he gently tapped Jess on the left shoulder. She mumbled a phrase into his chest, something unintelligible and soft, but Max just tapped her shoulder again.

The expression Jess gave him when she looked up was heartbreaking—so full of hope, pain, and joy—and Max felt the sting of tears in his eyes again.

“You’re _real_. You’re actually real this time.” The way she said it, such wonder coating the words, it made him hate the amount of times she must have imagined him. It made him hate the pain he’d put her through, when he’d been told that she was gone and he’d just up and left.

“Real. All here, but a bit more broken than last time.” He said it softly, for her ears only. “But we got an audience. Mostly friendly.”

Jess’ head snapped to where the warboys were standing, immediately tensing her posture for a fight. It was as if she hadn’t noticed them there to begin with, hadn’t noticed them as she was trying to get back the last belonging she had.

Almost as if she had followed the same train of thought, she ducked down and grabbed the photo, dusting it off before shoving it in her back pocket. Something precious, that she’d gone through hell to keep.

The boys were looking at her in a mixture of awe and trepidation, probably due to how quickly her motives towards Max had changed.

She gave Max a quick smile, before settling her expression back into the neutral mask that most people wore these days. Even so, she swung a friendly punch at his shoulder. “You been telling stories again, or do I have to go introduce myself?”

**Author's Note:**

> lets be honest this is 90% abandoned and i only ever think of writing this when i wake from a cold sweat. give me ten bucks and i'll write up a decent ending


End file.
